The World Trade Organization (OMC) I authorize China to engage in commercial retaliation against U.S for 645 million dollars per year in a case on countervailing duties imposed on US imports of a dozen Chinese products.
With that resolution, China It can suspend benefits to the United States, including the possibility of setting new tariffs or increasing existing ones against imports of products imported from the North American country.
These measures were declared incompatible with the norms of the OMC in the initial procedure and in the compliance procedure, after which China requested authorization from the Dispute Settlement Body (OSD) to suspend concessions for an annual amount of 2,400 million dollars.
Later, U.S contested this request, which gave rise to the present arbitration proceeding.
Thus, although China won the controversy, the authorization of retaliation was quantitatively below its request.
On January 26, an arbitrator from the OMC issued a decision on the level of countermeasures that China may request in the context of its dispute with the United States regarding the countervailing duties applied by the United States to certain products from the Asian country.
The arbitration procedure arises in a dispute initiated by China against U.S.
The challenged US measures concern the imposition of countervailing duties on a number of Chinese products, and the investigations that led to the imposition of those duties.
The panel of the OMC calculated the final figure based on the parties’ agreement to use a two-stage Armington model similar to that applied in arbitral decisions in United States–Washing machines (article 22.6 – United States) and United States-Antidumping Methods (China) (article 22.6 – United States).
Also taken into account was the parties’ agreement on a “duty exclusion” approach, under which duty payments are excluded from the final nullification or impairment calculation.
In addition, it was decided to exclude the lawnmowers from the proceeding, in light of the parties’ agreement that the relevant countervailing duty measures had been withdrawn before the end of the reasonable period of time and therefore do not fall within the scope of the proceeding. scope of this procedure.
In his methodology paper, China indicated that the proceeding encompasses a total of 11 countervailing duty investigations, in particular proceedings under Section 129 relating to:
- pressure tubes
- tubes
- Lawn mowers
- kitchen shelves
- OCTG
- thoron
- seamless tubes
- Paper for graphic printing
- aluminum extrusions
- steel cylinders
- Solar panels
In its written submission, the United States agreed with the relevance of only 10 of those 11 countervailing duty investigations.
roberto.morales@eleconomista.mx
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